Monday, 18 April 2016

A rescued hedgehog
sleeps in shredded newspaper at the West Hatch RSPCA wildlife centre in
Somerset. Numbers of rescued hedgehogs have increased as milder weather
is causing litters of babies to be born early, that then may not survive
the winter: photo by Ben Birchall/PA, 28 November 2014

Philip Larkin: The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

European Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus): photo by Gaudete, 21 July 2007

A woman holds a hedgehog at the Harry hedgehog cafe in
Tokyo, Japan. In a new animal-themed cafe, 20 to 30
hedgehogs of different breeds scrabble and snooze in glass tanks in
Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district. Customers have been queuing to
play with the prickly mammals, which have long been sold in Japan as
pets. The cafe's name Harry alludes to the Japanese word for hedgehog,
harinezumi.: photo by
Thomas Peter / Reuters, 5 April 2016

Kind

A man swims with a calf in the port city of Sidon in southern Lebanon: photo by Ali Hashisho / Reuters, 8 April 2015

A woman pulls a calf away from its mother, so she can milk the adult, in Uchuraccay, Peru: photo by Rodrigo Abd / AP, 9 April 2016

A newborn Asian elephant is helped by
his mother Farina (R) to stand up at Pairi Daiza wildlife park, a zoo
and botanical garden, in Brugelette, Belgium: photo by Francois
Lenoir/Reuters, 25 May 2016

Dairy cows nuzzle a barn cat as they wait to be milked at a farm in Granby, Quebec: photo by Christinne Muschi/Reuters, 26 July 2015

A cow stands in the middle of a busy
road as auto-rickshaws pass by in Bengaluru, India: photo by Abhishek N.
Chinnappa/Reuters, 2 June 2015

Buffalos escape a fire, which is
spreading on a patch of land by the Yamuna river, on a hot summer day in
New Delhi, India: photo by Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters, 9 June 2015

Sika deer run after being released from a nature reserve
on Strizhament Mountain, south of Stavropol, Russia: photo by Eduard Korniyenko / Reuters, 7 April 2016

The Cotopaxi volcano spews ash and
vapor, as seen from El Pedregal, Ecuador. Cotopaxi began
showing renewed activity in April and its last major eruption was in
1877: photo by Dolores Ochoa/Associated Press, 3 September 2015

A lioness pays her respects to Cecil. During this time, the animal had twenty or more lions in his
family.: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 21 October 2012Cecil was a dominant male over a large area for most of
his adult life. He is pictured here with his queen: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 21 October 2015

Two young males stand in the mist looking over a herd of buffalo: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 19 April 2015

Elephants play in the park: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 5 November 2014

A young cub, not content to sleep like the rest of the pride, yawns: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 23 October 2013

Jericho and Cecil are pictured on the last
morning photographer Brent Stapelkamp would see Cecil. Although unrelated, these two lions
maintained a strong alliance.: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 27 May 2015

A lioness rests beside the railway that separates the
park from a hunting area. The animals seem to know
where they are safe and where they are not. Cecil crossed this exact
track in July 2015 and never returned. Hwange National Park has lost
about a dozen lions to this train over the years.: photo by Brent Stapelkamp/Anastasia Photo, 10 June 2015

Cats crowd the harbor on Aoshima Island
in the Ehime prefecture in southern Japan. An army of cats
rules the remote island in southern Japan, curling up in abandoned
houses or strutting about in a fishing village that is overrun with
felines outnumbering humans six to one: photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters, 25 February 2015

A gosling peers out from its mother’s wings in Santa Clara, California: photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press, 15 April 2015

A Gentoo penguin feeds its baby at Station Bernardo O’Higgins in the Antarctic: photo by Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press, 22 January 2015

One stork stands on the back of another
as they communicate with each other on a nest on a structure in
Biebesheim am Rhein, Germany. A nesting colony of the migratory
birds has been present for two years here. The birds return every year
for rearing their young.: photo by Boris Roessler/EPA, 9 March 2015

Iraqi
seeks apology after being removed from Oakland-bound plane: Steve
Rubenstein and Kimberly Veklerov, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 April 2016

A UC Berkeley student who was removed from a Southwest
Airlines plane after a fellow passenger heard him speaking in Arabic on
his mobile phone is still waiting for an explanation and an apology from
somebody.

Khairuldeen
Makhzoomi, a 26-year-old Iraqi refugee and the son of a slain Iraqi
diplomat, had just boarded his Oakland-bound flight at Los Angeles
International Airport on April 6 when he called and spoke with an uncle on his mobile phone.

After the call ended, Makhzoomi said a female
passenger looked at him, got up and left her seat. A short time later,
an airport employee told Makhzoomi to get off the plane.

A male chimpanzee, Chacha, screams after he was darted
following an escape from nearby Yagiyama Zoological Park, in a
residential area in Sendai, northern Japan. The chimp
was eventually caught after being shot with a tranquilizer gun and
falling from the power lines, Kyodo news reported.: photo by Kyodo / Reuters, 14 April 2016

Makhzoomi
said his phone conversation had been with an uncle in Baghdad. They had
discussed a meeting of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council that Makhzoomi had attended.

After he was led from his seat, Makhzoomi said he was
questioned in the aircraft jet way by a series of security and police
officers. At one point, he told them he was a victim of discrimination.

“I told them, ‘This is what Islamophobia looks
like,’” he said. “And that’s when they said I could not get on the
plane, and they called the FBI.”

Workers set up a natural gas pipeline during a dust
storm at Iraq's border with Iran in Basra, southeast of Baghdad: photo by Essam Al Sudani / Reuters, 12
April 2016

Makhzoomi, who is studying political science and near
Eastern languages and literature at Berkeley, said he was interrogated
at length, sniffed by police dogs and subjected to an intimate body
search in front of passersby. FBI agents arrived and questioned him some
more.

Southwest, in a statement, said it removed the student from the plane
because of what it called “potentially threatening comments made aboard
our aircraft” and “further discussion.”: photo by Kurt Rogers /San Francisco Chronicle, 16 April 2016

“I had an emotional breakdown and cried a little bit,” Makhzoomi said. “I was so afraid. I was so scared.”

Hours later, he was allowed to leave the terminal and
his Southwest ticket was refunded. He bought a ticket from another
airline in Los Angeles and arrived in Oakland nine hours late.

“We were asked to respond, and we determined no further action was necessary,” said Ari DeKofsky, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Los Angeles office. She declined to elaborate on what actions agents took when they responded.

A Kisin, a Mayan death god, 600-900 AD,
is displayed at the exhibition ‘The Maya—Language of Beauty’ at the
Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin: photo by Markus Schreiber / AP, 11 April 2016

Southwest, in a statement, confirmed it had removed
Makhzoomi from the plane because of what it called “potentially
threatening comments made aboard our aircraft” and “further discussion.”
The airline said it would not have acted “without a collaborative
decision rooted in established procedure.” It declined to elaborate.

Southwest said it would not identify the person who
complained or specify what the person reported to have heard. The
airline issued a statement that said it “regrets any less than positive
experience on board our aircraft.”

Iraqi Security forces and allied Popular Mobilization
forces fire towards positions in the ISIS-held town of Besher, during a
military operation to regain control of the small town, outside the
oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Iraq: photo by Anmar Khalil / AP, 10 April 2016

Islamic leaders said they were disappointed to learn
of what happened to Makhzoomi and worried that racial profiling was
involved in his being removed from the plane.

Refugees and migrants clash with Macedonian soldiers
during a protest calling for the reopening of the border near their
makeshift camp in the northern Greek border village of Idomeni, on April
10, 2016. Dozens of people were hurt when police fired tear gas on a
group of migrants as they tried to break through a fence on the
Greece-Macedonia border. Toothpaste is smeared on the face to protect
against tear gas.: photo by Bulent Kilic / AFP, 10 April 2016

“We’re
concerned that this is part of a trend of Muslims being profiled and
their right to travel being impacted,” said Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Executive
director Zahra Billoo of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(left) and attorney Nasrina Bargzie (right). Billoo said the airline
owed Makhzoomi and the public a clear explanation of the incident and a
promise to review its procedures for handling similar incidents.: file photo by Liz Hafalia via San Francisco Chronicle, 16 April 2016

Billoo said the airline owed Makhzoomi and the public
a clear explanation of the incident and a promise to review its
procedures for handling similar incidents.

“For whatever reason, he was not allowed to fly on
the airplane and yet he was cleared by law enforcement,” Billoo added.
“We worry that they’re being overzealous.”

A boy with differently colored eyes waits in the doorway
of his family's house during a house-to-house anti-polio vaccination
campaign in Yemen's capital of Sanaa: photo by Khaled Abdullah / Reuters, 12 April 2016

The incident in Los Angeles was followed by a similar
removal of a Southwest passenger from a flight in Baltimore on
Wednesday. That passenger, a woman wearing an Islamic scarf, was asked
to leave the plane after she attempted to change seats during an
intermediate stop on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. No
other details about that incident were immediately known.

The Afghan puppeteer Mansoora Shirzad, right, records a
segment with Sesame Street's new character, a 6-year-old Afghan girl
called Zari, during a recording session for her first appearance on the
local production of the show in Kabul, Afghanistan: photo by Rahmat Gul / AP, 6 April 2016

Makhzoomi, who said he has taken two dozen flights on
Southwest in the past year or so and is a member of its frequent flier
plan, said he was seeking nothing more from the airline than an apology.

“I don’t want money,” he said. “I don’t care about that. The message of Islam is forgiveness. That’s all I want.”

Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft. A UC Berkeley student
was removed from an Oakland-bound Southwest Airlines plane at Los Angeles International Airport after a fellow passenger
heard him speaking in Arabic on his mobile phone: file photo by Robert Alexander, 16 May 2013 via San Francisco Chronicle, 16 April 2016Iraqis from the town of Heet in Iraq's
Anbar province, are evacuated by government forces to a safe area far
from the battlefields where Iraqi troops are trying to retake the
western town from the Islamic State: photo by adh Al-Dulaimi/AFP, 6 April 2016

Iraqis from the town of Heet in Iraq's
Anbar province, are evacuated by government forces to a safe area far
from the battlefields where Iraqi troops are trying to retake the
western town from the Islamic State: photo by adh Al-Dulaimi/AFP, 6 April 2016

Trees and high-water marks on previously-submerged land
behind Guri dam in Bolivar state, Venezuela. Drought
has turned parts of the reservoir behind Venezuela's Guri dam, one of
the world's biggest, into desert, but the government is optimistic that
rain will come within weeks to drive the vast installation that provides
the bulk of the nation's power.: photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters, 11 April 2016

"This has been rather a depressing day: killed a hedgehog when mowing the lawn, by accident of course. It's upset me rather."

I expect he had in the back of his mind Andrew Marvell's "Mower" poems, Marvell having been a presiding presence of sorts, there in Hull, the town where PL worked in the library, and where PL had been born and raised (and which he eventually represented in Parliament).

Responding to a request from John Betjeman for a list of poets from Hull -- this evidently for an anthology or radio programme -- Larkin concluded his short list: "And of course over all looms the enormous shadow of Marvell."

"There was a time when one could speak Arabic on a flight in the United States, or even read a book written in that language, without hesitation or the fear of suffering humiliating consequences. That time is long gone. Many colleagues and friends confess that they try to avoid carrying Arabic or Persian books on flights in order not to invite suspicious looks.

"On 6 April, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, an Iraqi refugee and UC Berkeley student, was on a Southwest Airlines flight at Los Angeles international airport talking to his uncle on the phone. He was removed, interrogated and searched by the FBI as a result. Then he was forced to find another flight. Why? Because another passenger heard him speak Arabic. 'Inshallah,' which means 'God willing,' an expression used by all native speakers of Arabic irrespective of religious affiliation, seems to have been the trigger."